Tuesday, November 22, 2016

The Real War on Science

The Real War on Science
The Left has done far more than the Right to set back progress.

My liberal friends sometimes ask me why I don’t devote more of my science journalism to the sins of the Right. It’s fine to expose pseudoscience on the left, they say, but why aren’t you an equal-opportunity debunker? Why not write about conservatives’ threat to science?

My friends don’t like my answer: because there isn’t much to write about. Conservatives just don’t have that much impact on science. I know that sounds strange to Democrats who decry Republican creationists and call themselves the “party of science.” But I’ve done my homework. I’ve read the Left’s indictments, including Chris Mooney’s bestseller, The Republican War on Science. I finished it with the same question about this war that I had at the outset: Where are the casualties?

Where are the scientists who lost their jobs or their funding? What vital research has been corrupted or suppressed? What scientific debate has been silenced?

As he details, the Left has corrupted vital research, but not the Right.

The biggest example 8 years ago was stem cell funding, but Barack Obama's policy was not much different from G.W. Bush's, and little has come of the research. The biggest example now is probably global warming, but that is also well-funded under Republicans and Democrats.

The Republicans even fund areas that are overwhelmingly Leftist, and where the research has Leftist conclusions.